Emerging writers will have the chance to work with Andre Fenton, Asiah Sparks, or Cory Lavender.
Cory Lavender is a poet of African Nova Scotian and European descent living in Mi’kma’ki. His full-length collection of poems Come One Thing Another (Gaspereau Press, 2024) won the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award.
Andre Fenton is an award-winning African Nova Scotian writer, performer, and arts educator who has represented Halifax at eight national spoken word festivals across Canada, and the Narrative Program Director at The Bus Stop Theatre Co-Op. Andre is the 2023 recipient of the
Portia White Protege Award and a 2022 recipient of an Emerging Artist Recognition Award from Creative NS Awards. Andre is the author of three young adult fiction novels, Worthy of Love. ANNAKA, which was the 2022 recipient of The Community & Place Award from Digitally Lit, and The Summer Between Us, which won Gold in The Coast’s 2022 Best Of Awards. Andre has facilitated writing and performance workshops in over 100 classrooms across Nova Scotia, and founded The Ink Collective, a Black writers workshop series. He is currently screenwriting the film adaptation of his novel, ANNAKA with Fine Devil Films, and is repped by CookeMcDermid and Meridian Artists. Andre is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Asiah Sparks is a polydisciplinary African Nova Scotian creative, storyteller, writer, and arts facilitator from Dartmouth, with roots in the historically Black community of Lake Loon/Cherry Brook. Their practice lives where creativity meets care.
Grounded in community and shaped by her lived experiences, Asiah’s storytelling navigates the rich terrain of identity, love, and resilience. Their work exists to disrupt the flattening of Black narratives, and their creations center joy, vulnerability, and the fullness of being.
While poetry remains her foundation, Asiah is deepening her practice through the exploration of screenwriting and filmmaking. Their directorial debut, “Healing Through Poetry,” a documentary-style short inspired by a healing arts workshop they facilitated for Black women, has been selected for the 2025 Emerging Lens Film Festival, and screened at the AfterWords Literary Festival in 2025.
As the founder of Art of Soul, Asiah continues to curate spaces that invite reflection, dialogue, and creative liberation. A former Youth Poet Laureate of Halifax and recipient of both the Provincial and HRM Volunteer of the Year Awards, Asiah creates to build worlds where others might find themselves, too.
The 8th House 
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